


The Sticky Ficky

by skye_42



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: Angst, Cardan Greenbriar discovers sticky hands, Crack, F/M, Fluff and Smut, I know the name is terrible but it’s what I call it on tumblr, Smut, The Great Sticky Hands War, and I’m actually a fan of it, im feeding myself so motherfucking well yall, im here for laughs, im sorry, imma lure y’all into a false sense of security, literally just a crack fic, no I’m not, ok maybe yes I am, starts post TCP pre TWK, then hit you with angst when you least expect, theres the angst, yes I literally put sticky hand induced smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:47:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 15,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24249040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skye_42/pseuds/skye_42
Summary: Cardan Greenbriar, High King of Elfhame, discovers a brand new way to annoy his Seneschal. War is coming to Elfhame, or at least to these two.
Relationships: Jude Duarte/Cardan Greenbriar
Comments: 29
Kudos: 140





	1. So It Begins

**Author's Note:**

> Y’all enjoy this crack I’m here to provide laughs hope it works lmao

Anger is an interesting beast, pure fury even more so. Frustration does funny things to even the most logical of people. 

Frustration over the ridiculous is even worse. 

Jude Duarte, Seneschal to the High King of Elfhame, was going to burn the world down. She was going to relish the screams of the dying and bathe in the blood of the masses. Nobody would be safe from her rampage, certainly not the king. 

THWAP

She had only enough time to colorfully curse before her letter disappeared off her desk, kidnapped by a giggling High King with a new mortal toy. 

“Cardan Greenbriar if you don’t give me back that fucking letter I’ll disembowel you!”

Cardan, for his part, completely ignored her as he pulled the neon yellow sticky hand off the stolen paper, dropping the letter to the floor and taking aim at a new target. 

Nothing was safe from High King Cardan and his dollar store sticky hand. Not letters, not formal documents, not even Jude’s ass when they were alone. Cardan has even managed to learn how to wield the hand with his tail, giving him added range and flair with his unprompted attacks. 

THWAP

There went her pot of ink, pulled off the table and sent crashing to the floor by that gods-forsaken fucking sticky hand. 

THWAP

Little yellow sticky fingers spread across a window. 

THWAP

A book sent flying, pulling a stack of papers down with it. 

THWAP

A perfect shot directly to Jude’s fucking forehead sends her out of her chair and barreling towards Cardan, no planning or finesse behind her attack, just blind rage. 

This was all Oak’s fault. He was undoubtedly the reason his Uncle Cardan had come into contact with this stupid fucking toy in the first place, he’s the one who robbed Jude of all her peace of mind this past week. 

No meetings could be finished when Cardan was taking aim for Randalin’s papers. No documents could be signed when he had that toy in his hand in place of a pen. Jude could risk walking around the study for fear of Cardan putting a target on her ass cheek and hitting the bullseye every fucking time. 

His coal-black eyes shimmered with mischief as her hands wrapped around his throat, pushing him back into the wall and sending the sticky hand flying off into the distance. 

“Cardan fucking Greenbriar I order you to never use that sticky hand again. You are to never use it to steal a paper or hit myself or anyone else, understood?”

Cardan just smiled and produced a smaller, teal sticky hand from his pocket. Also a gift from Oak, along with the easily fifty or so others he had hidden in his chambers. 

Jude’s eye twitched.


	2. Jude Fights Back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jude Duarte has had enough! How the hell does the king keep getting new hands???

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oak is a little shit, Cardan is a little shit, Jude is already at her wit’s end

Vivienne Duarte had been very wise to hide Oak when Jude returned to the mortal world, violently kicking the apartment door open with murder in her eyes and a pilfered sticky hand in her grasp. 

“Where the fuck does he keep getting these?” She screamed out in frustration, her every waking moment consumed by sticky hand-induced dread. 

Three weeks had passed since the day in the study, the day where Jude had wrapped her fingers around the king’s throat and ordered him to stop using his sticky hand to disturb the peace. Naturally, he’d just gotten a bunch of different sticky hands. He’d found a way around every one of her orders, changing out hands or targets every time she thought up a way to try and stop it. 

The High King was a monster; a monster with unfailing aim. 

Oak, hiding under Vivi’s bed and giggling as he wrote out a letter to his uncle—a letter that would absolutely include a brand new hand—listened close as his older sister raged. He wasn’t particularly sure how or why Jude had decided to get involved in politics with her sworn enemy, but it was the greatest entertainment he’d ever witnessed in his short little life. On top of all that, he now had a running correspondence with the High King of Elfhame! 

Oak was moving up in the world, one sticky hand at a time. 

“Do you have any idea how hard it is to run a country when your hands are tied by a boy’s obsession with some stupid toy?”

Vivi, back in the kitchen and leaning over a mug of coffee, openly laughed at her little sister’s rampage. 

THWAP

Jude screamed as she launched the stolen hand across the room, raging even harder when it stuck to the wall with that stupid fucking sound. She pulled at her hair, yelling without any real words and stomping her feet like the child she just barely isn’t. 

“Find something to fight back with,” Vivi offered with a shrug, eyeing the sticky hand and hoping it didn’t stain the paint on the walls. “If he’s truly as legendary with sticky hands as Oak assures me he is, you’ll need a weapon you can counter with.”

Jude gritted her teeth and spun on her heel, halfway out the door before she realized she had no mortal money and she’d need Vivi with her to glamour some leaves. 

But if Vivi came with her, Oak had to come, and Oak was so clearly on his Uncle’s side in this war. Family or not, she couldn’t risk letting her little brother in on her planning. 

Not when the stakes were this high. 

It took a few days of planning and a careful excuse for why she was returning to the mortal world so soon, but Jude eventually got her weapons of choice. 

Later that night, as the sun was nearly at its peak in the sky and Jude was waist deep in more of Cardan’s unfinished paperwork, she sensed him. 

She sensed that fucking hand. 

She heard it begin to whistle through the air, tiny rubber fingers reaching longingly for her extremely important paper. 

She spun in her chair. 

THWAP

THUNK

The paper slid onto the floor, accompanied by the sticky hand that Cardan had let go of in shock as he went over backwards, crashing into the doorframe at his back. 

The High King sank down, eyes wide as he stared down his seneschal, a dart suction cupped to his forehead. 

The most wicked grin Jude Duarte had ever pulled plastered itself across her face as she kept the nerf gun raised threateningly. She’d been gripping it in her left hand for hours, double checking it was loaded every five minutes as she awaited Cardan’s attack. 

“You’ve come prepared today, my dastardly little villain,” the king openly grinned as he reached up, pulling the dart off his forehead with a little pop!

“My job is far too important for you to ruin it with toys, Cardan.”

“I promised I wouldn’t make this easy on you,” he rose from the ground, the dart spinning in his fingers as he stalked forward, his tail sweeping along the floor. “But I will admit, I didn’t think you’d be willing to play with me.”

Jude’s grin fell as he laughed, now towering over her. 

Cardan Greenbriar leaned forward, his lips brushing against the shell of Jude’s ear. 

“Game on.”


	3. A Reason for War

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just some diet angst, just a lil bit of Cardan being honest with Jude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As soon as I figure out how to use italics and bold it’s over for you hoes

Sticky ficky 3  
As she restocked her nerf gun with more glow in the dark bullets, she found that she was having to remind herself that she wasn’t having fun. 

Planning to shoot the High King in the forehead wasn’t fun. In fact, it was an act of treason. Never mind that it was a king-sanctioned act of treason. It was still treason.

Jude Duarte, Seneschal to the High King of Elfhame, had long since chosen her weapon of choice. Though she could’ve gone for a more familiar suction cup dart crossbow, she felt that the true way to get the best of Cardan Greenbriar in this stupid little war was through the use of a gun. 

And guns she had. 

Jude had found herself in possession of fifteen or so nerf guns in the weeks that followed Cardan’s first encounter with a dart. It was clear that the High King, for his part, greatly preferred sticky hands. 

“It makes for better control,” he announced as he looped the rubber circle at the end of a sticky arm onto the end of his tail, just below the soft black tuft of hair. “And I can feel the connection, unlike with your silly little guns.”

“You’re a fiend and a scoundrel who enjoys smacking my ass,” Jude countered. 

THWAP

A solid connection from the light pink sticky hand attached to Cardan’s tail. An answering scowl from Jude. A never ending smirk from Cardan. 

THUNK

A dart suctioned perfectly to the High left King’s ear, just under the point. A sick grin from Jude. Narrowed eyes from Cardan. 

“Surely you can’t think you have a chance against me in war games?” Jude raised an eyebrow at Cardan as she leaned back against the desk in his study. “And certainly not with such shitty weapons.”

“I happen to have taken quite a liking to these!” Cardan sounded indignant for all of a moment before breaking, confessing something with the voice of a confidante, a voice he’d never really used with her before. “Besides, this is all Oak has seen fit to send me. The child seems to have an obsession and I’m more than happy to indulge him.”

Cardan turned, taking aim and launching the sticky hand towards the bullseye of a poorly drawn target on the stone wall of the study, hitting it without much effort. 

“Oak certainly considers himself to be on his Uncle Cardan’s side,” Jude’s tone softened as it always did when she spoke of her little brother, though she also sounded a bit hurt at the betrayal. “I’m sure you could request a better weapon and he’d oblige.”

Jude emptied a clip into the bullseye, darts flopping all around the room as Cardan sat down on a high backed chair, sticky handed tail resting on his thigh. 

“I’ll take what he sends me, he sounds excited by the whole ordeal and I’ll not risk ruining his fun by seeming ungrateful.”

Jude’s brow furrowed and she leaned back against the desk, looking to the king as the soft light of early morning shone on his face through the drapes. He was watching her lazily, dark eyes lidded and fingers tapping quietly against his thigh. 

As the silence stretched out, she reloaded her gun, this time with hot pink bullets that Vivi had gifted her. 

“I wish for the day that Elfhame is safe enough for young Oak’s return,” Cardan confessed. “My only other family is locked away in the Tower of Forgetting and I’d quite like to get to know my nephew.”

Jude didn’t look back towards Cardan, focused instead on cleaning away imaginary dirt spots from her nerf gun. “He’s a young boy,” she said. “Not different from any other, besides how his mother coddles him.”

That earned a snort from Cardan, causing her to look up and her brow to raise. 

“To be coddled by your mother would be a glorious treat indeed.” He was no longer watching her, his eyes screwed tightly shut. “To be a normal young boy even more so.”

She thought back to the bubble holding Eldred’s memory, to the little boy with oil-black hair and ragged clothing and she remembered the story of the baby prince being fed by a stray black cat instead of his mother. 

THWAP

The light pink sticky hand slapped perfectly against her right breast, just above the neckline of her modest black dress and right above her beating heart. 

“Oh my darling Jude, don’t let me distract you with my tales of woe,” he smirked. 

THUNK  
THUNK  
THUNK  
THUNK  
THUNK  
THUNK

Each shot followed the High King as he fell out of the chair, hitting either his forehead or his chest on the way down. Jude fumed, angry he’d gotten the better of her, wondering if he’d shared a moment of weakness with her. 

Cardan began to cackle from the floor, his earlier expression hidden once more behind a grin. He’d once told her that he smiles when he’s nervous. Did he have a reason to be nervous now, or was his smile genuine?

Jude reloaded her gun.


	4. At the Bottom of a Wine Bottle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sticky hands but make them Drunk and FlirtyTM

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you or a loved one reads this you’re entitled to damages lmao I’m so sorry

Jude Duarte, Seneschal to the High King of Elfhame, didn’t often find herself intoxicated. Whether it be from lacking access to wine that could be considered safe for mortals, or from lacking the time and opportunity to truly enjoy that wine, alcohol was the one poison she didn’t regularly partake of. 

But, she supposed there was a time for everything, and the time for Jude to angrily drown her sorrows in wine had come today. 

Cardan Greenbriar, High King of Elfhame and perpetual pain in her ass, had taken it upon himself to get uproariously drunk and offend a visiting dignitary or seven from the lower courts at that night’s revel. Leaving his Seneschal to pick up the pieces, he’d then retired to his rooms with an orgy’s volume of people and promptly lit his bed on fire. Again. 

So after a night spent putting fire after literal fire out, Jude had decided to bead down to the Court of Shadows and burrow her way to the bottom of a bottle. She’d been remarkably successful, chasing off even the Roach, who was typically quite willing to help one drink to forget. 

Nearly five months with Cardan under her control had already passed, her one year and one day was almost halfway over and she didn’t have even the slightest clue of how to extend her hold on him or keep the crown on his head past that day. As she buried her face in her hands, the world still spinning even behind her closed eyelids, she started to wonder if it was even worth thinking about while this drunk. 

“You’re thinking loudly enough to raise the dead.”

She startled as a familiar object wrapped around one of her wrists, a sticky hand lightly smacking against her cheek before unraveling and flying back towards where the High King leaned against the doorway. She hadn’t even heard him come in, she must have reached record levels of intoxication. 

As she looked over towards him, hoping he hadn’t noticed how he’d surprised her, her heart fell. The cruel smirk plastered across his lips told her everything she needed to know, though the red stains of wine dripping down his moon-pale skin were abundant enough to give her hope he wouldn’t remember in the morning. 

“Why do you always have that wretched thing on you?” She lowered her hands and reached for her wine bottle, leaning back so far in her chair that she almost fell. 

“Oh my darling god, you should know it’s always a new one,” he said with a smile, pulling his own wine bottle from behind his back and advancing towards her. 

She didn’t comment as he took a seat across the stone table, propping up his feet and downing a swig of wine in solidarity. 

His tail swished violently, coming to rest on top of his ankles with the soft tuft tap-tap-tapping against the top of one of his boots. She found herself almost hypnotized by the movement, staring at it for gods only knew how long. 

“Your tail is out,” she finally lamely offered when she noticed him grinning at her, his teeth looking all the more sharpened in her intoxicated state. 

“That tends to happen when I undress.”

She hoped he didn’t notice how her eyebrow twitched in annoyance with that announcement. She knew he’d been up in his rooms with an impressive amount of people, she’d figured he’d been partaking in some rather lascivious acts. Why should she be surprised he would’ve been undressed?

Why was she jealous?

“I’d think that, if I had a tail, I’d prefer to keep the delicate little thing hidden safely away from fires,” she announced, looking away from his face just in time to catch his tail curling around his abdomen almost fearfully. “And curious courtiers who would pull at it.”

“Would you pull at my tail, my darling Jude?” She didn’t look up at his words, not interesting in seeing any mocking on his face. 

She turned the bottom of her drink skyward, chasing bubbles as they floated up into the abysmally empty bottle. The green glass cast a delicate, mossy hue over her amber eyes, making the High King suck his breath in. 

“After what you did tonight, I’d pull your tail off and eat it raw in front of you,” she blamed the wine for her rash words as she fixed her gaze back on Cardan. He winced, one hand going protectively to the tuft of his tail and the other swinging wide, sending his sticky hand straight for her. 

She also blamed the wine for how she didn’t move fast enough, for how she let that pink sticky hand—glittery this time, a gift Oak had been particularly excited to send—hit her dead center in the forehead. 

THWAP

“Oh my sweet little villain, don’t torture me with promises of pleasure that you don’t plan to follow through with,” he recovered quickly, his tail unwrapping and coming back to rest stop his shoes. “And, I beg of you, don’t bother me with talk of courtiers and politics when my head swims so.”

“And what would you have me to instead?” She snorted at him and then did her very best to ignore his momentary flash of emotion. 

“Play with me.” He sent the sticky hand flying. 

And, this time, she caught it without thinking. 

His eyes sparkled with mischief as they sat, time suspended, a gods damned sticky hand the only thing between them. 

Then he unlooped the hand from around his finger, letting it fly towards her. 

She looked down, studying it for a moment before giving in and looping the toy around the index finger of her right hand. Then, she looked back up, cocked her arm back, let the hand fly—

And missed terribly. 

Cardan let out a roar of laughter, the sound shocking in the surrounding silence of the empty room. As her face contorted in a scowl and she tried again—and missed again—he continued laughing at her, his cruel little laugh sounding far too pretty to her intoxicated self. 

“Who would’ve thought the master marksman would be bested by a cheap gadget of her own world’s making?” As he mocked her, his grin looking painfully similar to the one he wore when he spoke of her looks the day of the failed coronation, she continued to get irrationally more angry. She kept trying to hit him, kept failing, kept letting the sticky hand whiff through the air. 

Then she would’ve landed a hit on his shoulder, but he’d already moved to a standing position—far too gracefully for his drunken state, at least in her opinion. 

He offered her a hand and she looked up in confusion, her brow raised at him. 

“Allow me to help you properly wield a sticky hand,” he said. “I can’t have my Seneschal and lead spy so woefully incapable of handling a weapon.”

It must’ve been the wine coursing through her system, but she decided to take his hand. She let him pull her to a standing position and lead her into the weapons room where targets lined the walls. She let him position himself behind her, his chest strong against her back and his soft breathing tickling the hair that had come loose from her plaits. 

He ran a hand down her arm before encompassing her fist in his own, his other arm laid across hers and keeping her pressed into his embrace. 

“It’s a lot like skipping rocks,” he whispered in her ear, pulling her throwing arm back with his own and angling her elbow properly. “You have to envision where you want the hand to hit.”

THWAP

Together they sent the glittery pink sticky hand directly at the target’s bullseye. 

Jude tried to ignore how her heart sped up, how her breathing became labored, how Cardan’s tail rose to wrap around her middle. She couldn’t help the shiver she let out as the soft tuft on the end ran across the sensitive inside of her elbow. Behind her, the High King tilted his head, feeling the brush of her hair against his cheek and allowing his eyes to flutter closed. 

THWAP

Another bullseye

THWAP

The hand slapped against the hilt of a sword, cast aside by someone too lazy to put it up. 

THWAP

What was she doing? Was her head swimming from the alcohol or from the scent of him?

THWAP

“That’s much better,” he praised and her heart absolutely ached with something she wasn’t prepared to understand. 

She stepped out of his embrace rather forcefully, trying to hide how her steps shook and her breathing was coming in ragged bursts. He was watching her discomfort with sad eyes and a smile just like the one he wore when she tied him up all those moons ago. 

“I’ve an early day tomorrow,” she lied, turning on her heel and fleeing. 

She ignored the empty wine bottles on the table as she passed, ignored the pounding in her head and the way the world lurched with every turn. When she made it back to her rooms and slammed the secret door behind her, she didn’t even think to take off her boots before crawling into bed. 

She couldn’t remember what had been said at the revel that night, she didn’t know what her duties were for the next day, she couldn’t recall if the king’s chambers had been burned earlier that day or the one before. She was so lost in her drink and confusion that memories and dreams bled together, none of them feeling even remotely right or real. 

And when she woke the next morning with a head pounding so badly that she went racing for a chamberpot to be sick in, she didn’t remember why a pink glittery sticky hand was wrapped around her right index finger.


	5. Jude in the Undersea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Is that,,,,,angst on the horizon???
> 
> Yes, yes it is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As soon as I figure out how to use italics it’s OVER for you hoes

She’d told him she’d be right back, she’d never even thought that she’d be the target. 

She’d planned everything around Oak being the target of the Undersea’s planning. She hadn’t ever considered she’d be in danger. 

She was stupid, stupid, stupid. So naïve to leave without backup, so idiotic to think herself above capture, so dumb not to require Cardan save her if she was ever taken prisoner. 

What was he doing now? Did he celebrate not having her around? Was Elfhame burning as he and the rest of the Gentry frittered their lives away at some party or another? 

Thwip 

She frowned at the little sticky hand, blue as the swirling water around her prison, as it smacked half-heartedly against her cell wall. Covered in briny dust from the dried saltwater that also caked her skin, it had long lost all its stickiness. 

He’d given it to her at the party, when he’d told her she was wearing a nice dress. Why hadn’t she thanked him then? Why had she only offered a snippish remark and a rude gesture? Was his smile genuine or had it been mocking?

Why had she kept the little blue hand?

She’d held onto it when her guards threw her into the cell. It was all she had left of her life above. 

For whatever reason she had kept it originally, she was glad now that she had it. It was all she had left of her sanity. It was all she had left of him. 

Thwip

She knew she shouldn’t be crying, that tears would exacerbate her dehydration, but she couldn’t help the way sobs started to wrack her body. It’d been so long since she’d had enough fresh water, food that wasn’t rotten. She knew her guards watched her, knew that she was supposed to be glamoured, knew that she had to eat the slop they give her to keep up her act. 

She couldn’t help but weep for when she’d been nothing more than Jude Duarte, Seneschal to the High King of Elfhame, for when her greatest worry was keeping Cardan sober enough to avoid a diplomatic incident. 

Thwip

She cursed violently and threw the useless hand across the damp room, so hurt by the way it limply bounced on the sandstone floor that she lashed out and punched the wall. 

Blood gushed over her ruined knuckles and she found that, despite her sobbing, no more tears were coming. Her whole body shook from starvation and her head pounded like it was seconds away from cracking open. 

Her head hadn’t hurt this badly since the morning after she got drunk in the Court of Shadows. She had no recollection of what happened after she’d made it about halfway through her wine bottle, but she did remember waking up with a pink glittery sticky hand wrapped around her right index finger. 

She had spent that morning trying desperately to remember the night previous, because she knew that a sticky hand always meant Cardan was involved, but she couldn’t for the life of her conjure up any reliable memories. 

For an hour or two, she had considered simply asking Cardan what had happened, but then she remembered his affinity for smacking her ass and she recalled their night in the chamber behind the throne, and she had decided that maybe she didn’t want to know what drunken antics she was capable of getting up to with a sticky hand and the High King. Any time she’d put more than a second’s thought to the subject after that, her cheeks had grown feverish and she had found herself looking for an excuse to leave. 

She had put the pink glittery sticky hand in her bedside drawer, under her favorite nerf gun, and promptly set about doing everything she could to forget about it. 

She had succeeded until that very moment. 

Jude Duarte, captured Seneschal to the High King of Elfhame, held her crippled hand to her chest and basked in memories of her king. She allowed her thoughts to travel to the way he lounged across his throne, his crown always dangerously tipped to one side. She recalled how he nervously offered her a glimpse of his tail the night she tied him up. Her heart fluttered at the mental image of how he looked, naked to his skin and propped over her on a bench in a secret room behind his throne. 

She tried to feel something other than sorrow, and she miserably failed. 

Balekin had forced her to kiss him the way she would’ve kissed Cardan. She technically didn’t have to, but she knew what he would’ve expected and she knew he thought her glamoured. When she kissed him the way she’d wanted to kiss the High King, her heart had broken in ways she didn’t even want to consider. 

But, left alone with a bleeding hand and a useless children’s toy that only reminded her of the one she missed most, what else did she have to think about?

Her kisses with Cardan had all been full of vitriol, that’s just the way they were with one another. With nothing to do but stare at the wall and imagine, Jude had begun to wonder what it would be like to kiss him with something other than hatred on her lips. How would he have reacted if, that night behind the throne, she had pressed a sweet kiss to his jaw instead of biting a vicious mark into his neck? Would he have held her softer? Would his tail, which had wrapped possessively around her thigh, have delicately caressed up her side instead?

Would she have liked it?

In the pit of her stomach, Jude found herself fearful that she might never find out, that her only chance at a loving embrace had been cruelly ripped from her by the evil elder brother of the man she wished had offered it instead. As time passed, her heart hardened around the idea that she would become just like the drowned ones, that she’d be left down here alone, that Cardan didn’t actually care for her enough to rescue her. 

Jude picked the sticky hand up again and wrapped it around the index finger of her left hand, keeping her bloodied right hand to her chest as she tried to drown her thoughts in the mindless target practice that she’d already spent what felt like a lifetime enduring. 

Thwip

Thwip

Thwi-ick

The sticky hand caught on a jagged edge of a sandstone block, the ring finger of the little blue hand ripping away and bouncing off into the darkness. 

She let her left hand fall into her lap, the sticky hand flopping to the ground like a dead fish. 

“Broken by Faerie,” she thought as her eyes lazily dragged from the hand to her own left ring finger. “A thing of mortal creation, not made to last in a world as beautiful and cruel as this.”


	6. Wedding Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sticky ficky but make it smutty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sorry lmao

Mrs. Jude Greenbriar, High Queen of Elfhame. 

Even the idea of it sent something like electricity sparkling throughout her whole body. 

Jude Duarte Greenbriar, former Seneschal to and current wife of the High King of Elfhame, sat with her legs crossed on her brand new marital bed, her fingers still clasping her new husband’s. 

“Jude...” Cardan looked like he was reaching for something, anything to say, but was unable to articulate his words. She felt herself smile a bit at how obviously lost he was, and then was subjected to the clenching of her heart as he grinned back. 

Then he ran his fingers through her hair and his grin faded as his brows furrowed. Jude went to ask what was wrong, but he spoke first. 

“Darling, you’re absolutely filthy,” he deadpanned as he drew his hand back, covered in dirt from where she’d been crawling through shrubbery and climbing on roofs. 

She frowned at him and pulled back, crossing her arms. “I had to sneak in, I told you!”

“I’m running you a bath.” He was off the bed and headed towards his bathing chambers before she had a chance to stop him. 

Suddenly feeling that the large bedroom was too quite to be in alone, she hopped down, her boots thudding against the cold stone floor. She followed Cardan into the bathing chambers, unable to keep herself from stopping along the way to inspect the notes on his desk for any important information regarding Madoc. 

The bathing room was full of steam and the scent of jasmine by the time she made it to the door. Leaning against the wooden frame, she took in the sight of her husband—her husband—on his knees and fiddling with the taps to control the water temperature. 

He turned the water off, the only sound in the room coming from residual drips as they both stared at each other. Jude chewed on her bottom lip and he nervously ran his fingers through his hair, the silence a tangible thing between them. 

“I’ll leave you to it—“

“Wait!” Jude couldn’t help the way she called out, and Cardan was evidently startled by how she threw her arms up to stop him. 

Since her return from the Undersea, she’d been unable to convince herself to actually sit in a bathtub. Being surrounded by water terrified her, not that she’d felt up to admitting it. But now, having yelled at Cardan, what choice did she have?

“Jude?” He took a step towards her, concern coloring his voice and darkening his eyes. 

She looked away and crossed her arms, forcing him to prompt her once more before she finally asked him to stay. 

“Just, sit with you?” Cardan asked, trying and failing to catch her gaze. 

She nodded, her eyes focusing on the rose petals floating in the bath water. She made sure her hands were hidden under her arms to hide the way they shook. 

Cardan clearly noticed something was wrong, but also saw that she wasn’t in the mood to talk about it, so he sat back down by the tub, leaning his head back against the wall. 

He watched her with a raised brow and nervous smile, sitting silently as she shuffled back and forth on the balls of her feet. 

“Well cover your eyes!” She finally snapped and he grinned at her, but obeyed without a word. 

She walked into the bathing chamber, allowing the heavy oak door to close behind her with a thud as she watched her husband. His tail was thrashing around his ankles, betraying his nerves even more than the smile plastered across his face. 

Jude started with unlacing her boots, setting them beside the door before shucking off her shirt and trousers. She tried not to blush, rationalizing that Cardan couldn’t see her and, even if he could, he’d seen her naked once before. 

She slipped out of her panties and unhooked her bra, leaving her clothes in a messy pile on the floor before stepping over to the tub. 

That’s where she stopped, her heart in her throat as she watched the water. 

As much as she had scrubbed herself the past week or so, Jude still felt the ghost of salt on her skin. Pools of water, even ones as small as bathtubs, sent pure terror spiking through her heart. 

“Jude, dearest?” Cardan’s voice shocked her back to reality and she turned to find him, eyes still covered by his hand. “Are you alright?”

She bit her lip so hard she thought she might rip through the skin as she weighed over the benefits and drawbacks of giving him some idea of what she’d gone through the past month. 

Finally, she allowed herself to whisper: “it’s the water.”

She watched as his brows raised in understanding. He seemed perfectly calm and collected, save for his tail, which flickered angrily, the only thing exposing his rage. 

“Would you like for me to join you?” 

It was a simple enough question, and an obvious one, but it still surprised her. That he’d even think to do something with the express intent of helping her out boggled her mind, even if he had just made her his wife and queen. 

“Yes,” she announced, shocking even herself. 

Cardan gave her the courtesy of not questioning her decision or waiting long enough to allow her to question it herself. He quickly stripped, throwing his clothes in the vague direction of her own clothing pile before stepping into the tub. 

He offered her a hand, his eyes glued to hers. With flushed cheeks, she allowed herself to take his hand and then she followed him into the water. 

He stood with her until she was confident enough to sit, then he held her firmly against his chest and, for the first time in what felt like ever, she felt just a little safe in Faerie. 

Cardan Greenbriar, High King of Elfhame and husband of Jude Duarte, spent his time in the bathtub doting on his wife, washing her hair for her while she washed her body, just so she could get out of the water quicker. He was there for her if she shook or her breath became short, and he was kind enough not to mention it at all. 

“How unusual,” she thought, “to see Cardan with his guard down, to relax in his presence.”

And by the time she got out of the bath, she didn’t feel the need to wrap a towel around herself as tightly as possible. She dried off and then threw her towel into the hamper, letting the cool air raise goosebumps over her skin as her heart raced. 

“Beautiful,” Cardan quietly observed, causing a flush to rise on her cheeks. 

He left the bathing chamber, also without a towel, his tail swishing against the stone floor. Her mouth went completely dry as she allowed herself to take in the sight of her naked husband waking away. 

Jude went to follow him, but, in her distraction, she tripped over the pile of her clothes. She looked down to free her foot from the confines of her discarded trousers, and her eyes caught on something familiar. 

The blue sticky hand, missing its ring finger, had fallen out of her pocket. 

She’d washed it when she returned from the Undersea, doing everything she could to get rid of the layer of salt leftover from her watery prison. It’s stickiness had returned some, though shoving it into her pocket probably hadn’t helped on that front. Jude didn’t know why she’d brought it with her, but now she couldn’t help the wicked grin that spread across her face. 

Jude slyfooted into the bedroom, broken blue hand gripped tightly. Cardan was luckily facing away, staring out the window, still naked as a jay. 

THWAP

The hand connected with Cardan’s left asscheek and his tail instantly shot out stick-straight behind him like something out of a cartoon. He squealed like a little girl, and, when he spun around, pure shock was all that greeted her as she laughed in his face. 

The next five or so seconds passed in slow motion. Cardan noticed the hand, realized what happened, set his shoulders with a predatory gaze, and began to run for her. Jude gave chase, spinning on her heel and making for the door that would lead out to his sitting chamber. 

He finally caught her in his closet, surrounded by all his ridiculously frilly costumes as she pressed back against his glitter-coated vanity. She was trapped, caught red—well, blue—handed and grinning. 

“Someone’s aim has improved,” he observed. “I suppose sobriety has something to do with it.”

Jude, who still didn’t remember the night with the pink glittery hand, had no idea how to respond to that. So, she settled for: “I had a lot of time to practice.”

He walked towards her with the slow gait of a lion stalking its prey, eyes glued to where the little blue hand hung down by her knee. As he got closer, he allowed his eyes to move up, taking in his wife’s body with the nervous smile that he always wore around her. 

“I can’t believe you kept it.” He, of course, knew the hand was the same one he’d given to her at Taryn’s wedding. That she’d not only accepted it, but kept it with her both during and after her time in the Undersea, made his chest feel tight. Everything about what had happened to her in the Undersea made his chest feel tight. 

“It was a gift from my king,” she smiled, a hint of teasing in her voice as he finally reached her and she pressed her hands against his chest. “Besides, I felt a sort of kinship with it.”

He raised a brow until she held up the hand, showing how it was missing the same finger she’d lost a piece of. 

He grabbed the hand from her and studied it for a moment before placing it decisively on the vanity behind her and picking up her left hand, pressing a kiss to her disfigured finger. 

Her breath caught in her throat and she couldn’t help how her right hand traveled up to wrap around his shoulders. She pulled him closer as he continued to kiss down her palm, the pulse point on her wrist, the inside of her elbow. 

When he made it to her neck she gasped, letting out a quiet little moan as she felt his sharp teeth grazing against the sensitive skin over her jugular vein. 

“Cardan.” It was quiet and needy and she blushed at how she sounded, but quickly forgot any embarrassment as she felt his reaction pressing against her stomach. 

This wasn’t the first time they’d been in a position like this, but this was the first time that neither felt any animosity. That night in the little room behind the throne was all snapping teeth and sharp fingernails. As Cardan gently lifted her to sit on the edge of the vanity, she knew this would be more soft caresses and gentle gasps. 

He kissed her sweetly and she let herself card her fingers through his curly black hair, leaning into the kiss and scrunching up her nose when his eyelashes tickled at her cheek. 

She was nervous, so terribly nervous, but at least they’d done this before. She’d had his mouth on her feverish skin and his fingers inside her, she knew how he bucked his hips up in the throes of passion. 

Jude let one hand travel down her husband’s chest and over his stomach as they kissed. When her fingers made it to the coarse hair below his navel, he pulled back. 

“Jude—” he started, lust in his eyes. 

“You first,” she cut him off, desperately hoping that he’d understand just how nervous she was, how she needed him to be weak before she could be. 

He nodded and leaned back in to kiss her once more as she wrapped one hand around him. 

She knew from last time that he liked for her to be a little rough, so she made sure her grip was tight as she worked him over, her thumb occasionally rubbing precum over the sensitive head. 

He groaned into the kiss, moving to nip at the spot behind her ear before sucking a deep purple mark on her neck. 

The sounds he let out were salacious, his curses sending waves of heat to her core as she focused on bringing him over the edge. It wasn’t until she moved to bite at his neck that he finally gasped her name, shuddering as he spilled over her hand. 

She brought her hand to her mouth as he watched with rapt attention, licking at her thumb and ending up with some of his spend painted on her cheek. 

That set him off and she barely had time to grasp the vanity edge for dear life before he was on his knees between her legs, too desperate after so long apart to even think of teasing her. 

His tongue circled her clit and he pushed a finger inside her, eyes fluttering closed when he felt just how wet she was for him. With his other arm, he threw one of her legs over his shoulder before grabbing her hip to keep her pressed against his face. 

Jude moaned and cursed, her fingers pulling at Cardan’s hair hard enough to make him growl and double down, slipping a second finger into her and smiling at the sounds her body made as he pumped his fingers in and out. 

When he curled his fingers inside her and sucked at her clit, she threw her head back so hard that it cracked against the vanity mirror. Cardan tried to pull back to check on her, but she just used his hair to yank his face back to her center. With a smirk, he continued his ministrations. 

After adding a third finger, he made quick work of her. With her legs shuddering and her breath coming in gasps, she cried out something between his name and a curse as release barreled through her. He didn’t stop moving until her aftershocks had stopped. 

He pulled his fingers out and leaned his cheek against her inner thigh, looking up at his wife with a satisfied grin as her chest heaved. She watched him in turn, trying to use her hand to smooth out the mess she’d made of his hair. 

“How are you feeling?” He finally whispered after a few minutes, feeling like talking at a normal volume would shatter whatever had just formed between them. 

“My head hurts.”

“Slamming your head into a mirror will do that,” he couldn’t help but laugh and, though she tried to scowl at him, she found herself laughing too. 

He ran his hand over her other thigh as her leg slipped off his shoulder. He stood up, wrapping his arms around his wife’s waist and feeling his heart soar when she wrapped hers around his neck. 

When he kissed her, everything felt right in the world. For just a moment, there was no Madoc and no war. They weren’t royalty or former enemies, they were simply two lovers basking in one another’s embrace. 

“Carry me to bed?” Jude asked as she pulled back from the kiss. 

Cardan pressed his forehead against hers, taking in a deep breath of her scent and running his hands up her back. 

“Of course,” he responded. 

The little blue sticky hand with a missing ring finger was left behind, forgotten on the vanity.


	7. Pain in the time of Sticky Hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angst but make it sticky

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If y’all go to my tumblr (snusbandxknifewife) you can read the fic with the intended italics because AO3 won’t let me do italics on mobile. Up to you how you wanna consume your crack fic tho So if you prefer AO3 more power to ya!

Dear High King Uncle Cardan Sir,

It is with a heavy heart that I write to inform you I can no longer engage in correspondence with you, nor can I continue to be your sticky hand supplier. While my alliances were with you throughout this long and trying war, I cannot side with you anymore, given the recent turn of events. 

I don’t know what happened with Jude, or why she’s staying in our guest room, but I do know that she suffers. When she saw my green sticky hand in the living room her first night here, she broke down sobbing. 

Uncle Cardan, I confess I have never seen my sister cry. 

So I send this letter to inform you that I have washed my hands of The Great Sticky Hand War, as I now wash my hands of you. I wanted to be friends, but I must stand by my sister now, as I know she would stand by me. 

Why did you have to hurt her?

With disdain,  
Oak

Little Oak closed his thesaurus and put down his mechanical pencil, handing the letter to Vivi to proofread. Vivienne Duarte, for her part, had no idea why Oak had decided to stake his honor upon something as trivial as a sticky hand, but she dutifully read over his letter, correcting any spelling mistakes before sealing it in an envelope and promising to send it to Faerie. 

If Oak was to become High King one day, he would need to learn diplomacy, this was as good a place as any to start. 

So Vivi watched with raised brows as Oak gathered up all his sticky hand memorabilia, his collection and the propaganda posters he’d made for the war, and threw it in the trash without a second glance. His bottom lip wavered and tears seemed ready to spill from his eyes. 

Vivi took him out for pizza that night, leaving Jude alone in her room, crying like usual. 

~~~~~~

Two weeks had passed since the night Vivi took Oak for pizza, and while she had been confused then, she was now severely worried. 

Jude Duarte was a shell of a person. She’d get up to go to the bathroom, but she had yet to take a shower or even brush her hair. She barely ate, and what she ate was anything but nutritious. She denied herself water to the point that her head pounded, and only then would she sneak into her sister’s supply of alcohol, leaving her to wake the next day with a headache already formed. 

Vivi didn’t know what the hell to do. She couldn’t handled a normal breakup, one where her sister cried if a certain song came on or because her boyfriend had cheated on her. But how was she supposed to handle a newlywed, exiled from her home and throne? Especially when even the thought of a sticky hand or nerf gun sent her over the edge?

Honestly, Vivi didn’t know what kind of set up those two had had when Jude was still in Elfhame, and she didn’t ever intend to learn. The likelihood of some weird sex thing being involved was way too high for her to even consider asking, not when she already shuddered every time she passed a sticky hand in the toy aisle of the local Dollar Tree. 

“Jude?” Vivi called out, knocking on the doorframe of her guest room and staring into the darkness, towards the pile of covers that shielded her sister from the rest of society. “I ordered Chinese food, it should be here in forty-five minutes. I made sure to get sweet and sour chicken, I know it’s your favorite!”

Her fake upbeat tone echoed back to her, but Jude refused to move. With a heavy sigh, Vivi walked forward and sat on the edge of her sister’s bed. 

The girl looked like a ghost, her eyes staring blankly ahead and her cheeks stained with tears. 

“Jude, honey, you know I love you,” she sighed, patting Jude’s hip. “But you smell like a dumpster. Please come shower in my bathroom.”

Jude, her mouth covered by her duvet, mumbled something Vivi couldn’t understand. Then, after prompting, she spoke again. 

“Need help,” she whispered, the most pitiful noise Vivienne had ever heard in her—admittedly short—life. Jude Duarte, asking for help? Fuck. 

She decided not to say anything, opting to just pull down the blankets and allow Jude to use her shoulders as support to sit up. 

Jude’s time in the Undersea had been tough on her body, and her wallowing in the mortal world had worked overtime to rob her of whatever muscle and fat she had left. Starving oneself and laying in bed at all hours of the day was a terrible recovery strategy, but Vivienne couldn’t really bring herself to berate her sister. 

Jude leaned heavily against her sister’s side and together they stumbled through the hall and into Vivi’s bathroom. 

Vivi turned on the water, ready to leave to give Jude some privacy, and stopped when she saw the way her sister’s fingers shook. She knew then and there that Jude wouldn’t be able to undress herself, so she did it for her. 

Just like when they were children, after Madoc had murdered their parents and spirited them away to Faerie, Vivienne Duarte helped her sister out of her clothes. When they were little, Vivi had been in charge of bathing the twins and helping with their hair. It’s been years since she’s had to do this, but she put Jude in the shower and washed her hair as the young woman sat, face first in the blasting water. 

Vivi grit her teeth in anger as she took in the poking bones and concave stomach of her little sister, the girl who had always been full-figured and strong. Her body, her tenacity, her will to live, all taken from her so quickly. Jude Duarte looked broken as Vivi washed her hair, pulling fingers through tangles that had long formed into clumps the size of her palm. 

Jude should’ve been safe, she should’ve been ruling in Elfhame, where food and wine abounded and excess was the name of the game. She shouldn’t be wasting away to nothing in a world she never claimed as her own. Cardan, who, by Vivi’s own observation, cared for Jude, should’ve known what banishment would do to her. 

No matter what happened, no matter why she’d angered him, he should’ve never banished her. Not then, not so soon after she’d been tortured. 

Vivi helped Jude out of the shower and helped her dress before steering her towards the living room, where Oak was waiting with the Chinese food, Teen Titans playing on the old tv. 

Vivi took her food into her room and sat down with a pencil and paper. 

Cardan Greenbriar, you worm-eaten husk of a man,

I don’t care who you are or what you are, I don’t care about curses or crowns or kingdoms or fate, I care about family. And, right now, mine is hurting. Fix things with my sister, or, so help me gods, you’ll be fucking mincemeat. 

Sincerely,  
Vivienne Duarte

The paper ripped in some places she was pushing so hard, but she figured that would help get the message across. 

She sent it directly to the High King of Elfhame. 

~~~~

The scent of smoke hung thick in the air of the unnaturally quiet room. The birds outside the open window knew to stay silent as the man on the floor threw a second crumpled up paper into the crackling fire. 

The High King of Elfhame’s rooms were in shambles; furniture broken in rage, tapestries form down by hands with nails bitten down to the quick, books toppled from precarious places on overfilled shelves. 

One man, the king himself, sat in the center of the carnage, his back pressed to the foot of his grand bed and his legs stretched out towards the fire roaring in the corner of his bedchamber. 

His eyes were wide but unseeing, tears cutting ragged trails through the dirt smudged across his cheeks and his hands shaking in his lap. His tail, freed from his breeches, was the only part of him smart enough to try and hide from the flames. It stuck out behind him like a sore thumb, cowering under the bed in a way that he wished he was small enough to do. 

What had he done to his Jude?

He’d thought for sure she would’ve put two and two together, would’ve figured out his riddle. She’d already announced herself to be the High Queen if Elfhame, all she had to do was say she pardoned herself! 

He’d considered that maybe she had been to tired from her ordeal the day of her banishment to decode his words, but he was positive she would’ve been recovered enough to come back and claim her throne by now. 

His Jude, his darling god, should’ve been by his side already. 

When he’d received Oak’s letter a fortnight ago, his very heart, as scabrous and small as it may be, had felt like it was ripped from his chest. His nephew, his only family left—save his mother—so recently introduced and so quickly ripped away from him. He had to admit that one day Oak would make a fantastic diplomat, he was already capable of getting his point across with scathingly few words. 

But when he’d gotten Vivienne’s letter, that’s when he began to realize he’d truly fucked up. 

His head pounded and his stomach was in knots as he wondered what had happened to his wife in the past two weeks, what had warranted such strong words from his sister-in-law and former friend. Was Jude sick? Had she hurt herself? Was she refusing to eat?

Would she recover? He couldn’t even begin to picture a world where Jude didn’t recover, where she wasn’t fighting tooth and nail to better herself, where she wasn’t the powerhouse he always saw her as. 

Deep down in his heart he knew that he’d done the one thing that all the torture in the Undersea wasn’t able to do: he’d broken his wife’s spirit. 

He’d never forgive himself. 

“Your Majesty!” 

Cardan didn’t so much as blink as the Bomb screamed, entering the disaster of her king’s rooms and likely expecting to find his dead body on the floor. 

When she saw the fire, she gasped in horror and grabbed Cardan by the shoulders, throwing him as far away from the fire as she was capable of. 

The fire had reached halfway up the wall and was dangerously close to engulfing the bookshelf closest to the window. Anyone with a brain knew that, if she left to get buckets of water, the whole room would be up in flames by the time she returned. So, she made the executive decision to sacrifice his duvet—the duvet that he’d pulled up over his sleeping wife only two weeks and a day prior. 

She threw the duvet over the fire and began to stomp on it, her thick rubber-soled boots making a hollow THUNK every time she brought her foot down. 

When the fire finally stopped trying to fight back and the room was full of cloying black smoke, she pulled the remains of the duvet up. 

And it stuck to the floor. 

The Bomb furrowed her brow in confusion and pulled harder, bracing her feet against the stone floor and yanking with all her might until the duvet finally gave up and she went flying backwards, landing harshly on her butt with the ruined duvet in her hands. 

The underside of the duvet was covered in black scorch marks and some strange, multicolored substance that she can’t quite place. 

But Cardan knows what it is, and he reached for the duvet; his fingers running through the molten hot rubbery liquid, tears springing to his eyes once more. 

“Your Majesty?” Bomb’s voice was quiet, confused as she watched the boy king spread boiling hot goop between his nimble fingers. 

“I couldn’t look at them anymore,” he whispered back and Bomb put two and two together. 

He’d started the fire to melt all his sticky hands. The gifts from his nephew, the game he’d played for weeks with Jude. All up in flames in the blink of an eye. 

“Why hasn’t she come back?”

Bomb winced, reaching to try and pull his hand back. She could see boils starting to form on his fingers and she knew that if she didn’t get the melted sticky hand off him soon, his skin would burn so badly that it fell off. 

“If you were her, would you?” Bomb asked, succeeding in grabbing his hand and worrying at her bottom lip as she saw the blood red burn marks on his hand. 

He ripped his hand back from her, forcing her to look him in the eye, to see the wild devotion in his face and the desperation dripping from each tear. 

“I’d always come back for Jude. Do you understand that?” He sounded ragged, broken and robbed of comfort. “Always. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of going after her, Liliver. Please, you must know that. You have to know that.”

The Bomb had never seen anything like this, not from Cardan, not from another faerie, not from anyone. This kind of pure, unrestrained pain reached out from every facet of the king’s being and grabbed her heart with a grip of cold iron, throttling her as she watched him suffer. 

“Liliver I did it for her! Everything I did was for her, she has to know that. She can’t not know that!” He’d reached the point of sobbing, his burned hand hanging limply at his chest and starting to well blood from where the burns broke his skin. 

“They would’ve killed her, Liliver, we both know it!” Cardan’s voice cracked and he folded over himself. “You saw what she looked like, she was wasting away! No mortal should ever be that thin, Liliver, certainly not Jude!”

“Your Majesty, please.” Bomb didn’t know what to do beyond grab his injured hand once more. She pulled him to his feet and hauled him over to the bathing chamber, but he stopped in the doorway. He refused to go in, refused to hard that brambles grew over the entrance and stopped the Bomb from trying again. 

So she moved him to his desk and she sat him down. It took about a half an hour of work, but she was able to pull the ruined sticky hand mash off his hand, burned skin and blood falling away with every movement. The whole time he sobbed, he lamented, he worried. Cardan Greenbriar, High King of Elfhame, told her every word from the two letters he’d received because he’d memorized them both in his pain. He told her of his fears for his wife and he asked for her advice and she didn’t know what to tell him. 

She didn’t know what she would’ve done if she’d been Jude and Van had been Cardan. She didn’t know how to come back from a betrayal like that. 

“Write back,” she finally offered as she bound his hand. Around them ash was still falling and his room was still a disaster, but at least Cardan seemed to have recovered some of his composure; sewn together just like his ruined hand. “Write Jude, tell her what you meant. You can’t leave Faerie to go get her, not with Madoc on the prowl, but that doesn’t mean you can’t speak to her in your own way.”

He froze, his hand throbbing against the confines of his bandages as he looked at the Bomb. She was right. She was seldom wrong. 

Liliver figured that she wouldn’t get his dismissal, not with the way his gaze had gone so distant so suddenly, so she excused herself. She arranged for the rest of the Court of Shadows to clean his rooms, ensuring that she was the one cleaning his bedchamber. 

She watched as he wrote and wrote and wrote and she said nothing, not that he would’ve heard her anyway. He was way too far in his own head. 

She found herself grabbing his jacket off the floor—no doubt thrown in a fit of anger earlier during the night—and she found herself walking towards his closet. 

Cardan Greenbriar hadn’t gone into his closet since that night, his wedding night. Not since he’d been with his wife, his darling. 

So it was Liliver who found the discarded blue sticky hand with the broken ring finger, the only sticky hand saved from the great sticky hand fire. 

She didn’t even think as she grabbed it and hid it in her trouser pocket, slyfooting away and out into the hall. She didn’t think as she snuck into a back tunnel and worked her way up to the room that Jude had kept as Seneschal. She didn’t think as she opened Jude’s bedside drawer. 

And when she was met with a pink glittery sticky hand, she smiled. When she set the blue hand next to the pink one, she thought that maybe, just maybe, these two would have a chance. 

She hoped they’d have a chance.


	8. Pillow Fort Fun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So @slightlyrebelliouswriter23 on tumblr accidentally gave me this idea when I wrote a hc at her request. For those of you following my tumblr, I’m sorry to report this is NOT the worm on a string chapter, but it is coming!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m not sorry  
> Also if you wanna read with the correct italics my tumblr is snusbandxknifewife

Wssssh

THUNK

Jude Duarte Greenbriar, Hugh Queen of Elfhame and wife to Cardan Greenbriar, dove to the side at the very last moment, just barely avoiding the glow-in-the-dark suction cup dart as it flew past her head, sticking comically to the groin of a satyr statue in the office she shared with her husband. 

She swerved onto one knee, taking aim directly at Cardan’s pretty black eyes and letting fly a dart of her own, this one pink and with a soft tip. Like most things in her life, she was right on target, her timing impeccable and her aim unfailing. 

Why Cardan insisted on doing this when he was so obviously set up to fail always confused her, but she was never one to back away from a surefire victory. 

Using the disorientation caused by her near-perfect hit, Jude scrambled to her feet and careened out the office door; headed for their destroyed sitting room. She was out of bullets and needed to restock. Luckily, she knew the sofa fort like the back of her hand, and she had hidden an extra gun in the hollow of the underside of a sofa cushion for just this moment. 

But she always underestimated just how fast her husband could move. Cardan was a man well practiced in getting others to forget he could be lethal. Hidden behind the near-constant dullness of intoxication and the ever-present serving of indifference, Cardan always payed attention. He was a dangerously advanced student of the Court of Shadows, and he’d been raised in an insanely cutthroat royal family. 

She needed to stop forgetting that. 

“Jude, villain and darling,” he purred in her ear as he captured her by the waist, hauling her up over his shoulder and back away from her stash. “Leaving so soon? I was having so much fun.”

“Let go of me!” Jude squealed, going for threatening as she wiggled like a petulant puppy in his arms but unable to hide the mirth in her voice. “I said unhand me!”

Beneath her stomach she felt him chuckle as he ignored her, spinning towards their bedroom and keeping one hand firmly on her ass to make sure she didn’t successfully squirm away. 

If their sitting room was a disaster, their bedroom was a war zone. The mattress was completely off the bed frame, angled like a lean-to and hiding a pile of pillows for ample cuddling. The vanity that Cardan used to use as a place to hold his wine was in the middle of the room, hooked to other pieces of furniture by fine silken sheets as they spread across the chamber. 

Forts had become a topic of conversation after Jude drunkenly admitted to loving them in childhood. One night, as she and Cardan were deep in their drink and basking in one another’s naked company, she’d gotten to talking about how little Jude had always loved Friday nights. 

Friday nights meant no school the next day, no sports and no homework for the following week. Friday nights meant staying up and gorging on microwaved fish sticks with a dessert of cosmic brownies. Friday nights meant reruns of Scooby Doo and pajama parties with her whole family. 

Most importantly, Friday nights meant pillow fights and forts in the living room. 

Forts in the living room meant family sleepovers in the living room. 

Family sleepovers meant she had her parents with her, meant she was safe, that she was nothing more than a child. 

A child with no knowledge of real war, of Faerie, of bloodshed and suffering and sacrifice. 

Cardan had confessed to her, after she’d described her coveted purple unicorn pajama pants and her favorite mortal soda, that he’d quite like to know what it was like to have a pillow fight and a fort in one’s living room. He hadn’t expected her to follow through. Hell, he hadn’t even expected her to remember. But then, after nearly a week had gone by and he was aching after an infuriating meeting and a ridiculous revel, he’d returned to their chambers to find the sitting room turned over and a pile of sheets by the door. 

That night was the first of what would become their weekly ritual. What began as a little fort in the sitting room turned into nerf gun fights and feasting on only the most mediocre of mortal cuisine, sheets hanging from every viable surface in the royal apartments and Homeric descriptions of cartoons from Jude’s childhood, relaxing in one another’s embrace and having a little fun—between, below, and above the sheets. 

It seemed like every day they’d find some memento of their Friday nights, a sticky hand that Cardan had used to smack Jude’s ass, a pillow from their bed in their bathtub, or—Cardan’s favorite—Jude’s stash of good wine hidden in the skirts of the dress she was due to wear the following day. Each little thing made them grin and made their hearts go weak with love for their partner. 

And that’s what it was, love. 

After all this time, after all the teasing in school and the suffering so early in Cardan’s reign, after Madoc and the Undersea and exile, they loved each other. It surprised Jude every day to realize it, but she couldn’t deny it was there. No one who saw the way the king looked at the queen could deny it was there. 

Cardan shocked Jude back to reality by none-too-gently throwing her atop a pile of pillow. When she gave him an offended gasp, he turned his nose high and said: “I have no sympathy for prisoners.”

“Am I a prisoner now?” Jude asked, a sly smile overtaking her face as she watched her husband stalk around the room like the cat he just barely wasn’t. Sure, she didn’t have a functional weapon and she was pretty winded from the fall, but she knew she could take him without too much trouble. 

He stopped cold, his back turning rigid as he stared at something she couldn’t see. Jude felt her stomach clench and she couldn’t help but wonder if she’d said something wrong. She and Cardan had gotten a lot better at communication over the years, but they still had their moments. 

Unable to convince herself to open her mouth to ask what was wrong, she watched in horrified silence as her husband flexed his hands once, twice, three times. 

Then, when he turned to face her, something had changed in his eyes. 

“Of course you are,” he spit at her with a vitriol he hadn’t used in years. “Isn’t that what you’ve always been? All you’re good at being?”

Her brow furrowed and she felt a furious blush rising to her cheeks, but as her husband fully turned towards her, his boots angled directly at her outstretched legs and his face dark in a way she didn’t like to remember, she couldn’t bring herself to ask him what he was talking about. 

Jude was unable to verbally defend herself as he took a step towards her. In fact, she was unable to do anything but scramble awkwardly onto her hands and feet. 

“Poor little Duarte, a human child stolen away to Faerie,” he hissed at her, advancing. Jude felt a lump in her throat that she was unable to swallow around and she began to crab-walk backwards as fast as she could. Still, he gained on her. 

She successfully dislodged herself from the pile of pillows, the cold stone floor biting into her hands as she continued to move away from her husband. He seemed so angry, so hateful where he’d once been so loving. 

“Cardan—“

“Shut your filthy human mouth!” Cardan shouted, so suddenly and so loudly that she couldn’t help but flinch. And then she was against a wall with no way out and he was only fifteen feet from her. 

Jude was looking for something, anything to defend herself. She tried to reassure herself that she was the better fighter, that she was protected against geases and that she had the land on her side just as much as he did, but, in the face of that evil look in his eyes, it did nothing to calm her. 

“Jude fucking Duarte, the scum of the gentry,” he spit as he tilted his head, inspecting her the same way a troubled child would inspect a beautiful butterfly right before they ripped the poor thing’s wings off. “Did you honestly think you’d ever be anything more than a prisoner?”

She blanched and he was ten feet away. 

“Did you think you’d ever stand a chance against a people so undeniably better than you?”

A cold tear dripped down her cheek and he was five feet away. 

“Did you think anyone, much less someone like me, could ever love the likes of you?”

He gripped her by the throat and yanked her off her feet, slamming her against the unforgiving stone wall and glaring into her eyes, his nose a hair’s breadth away. 

“Jude Duarte, Seneschal to the High King of Elfhame. Jude Duarte, Hugh Queen of Elfhame,” he sneered in a voice so high-pitched that it was obviously making fun of her. “Did you think it ever mattered? Did you honestly believe that those titles made you safe?”

She opened her mouth to try to speak, but she couldn’t force any air out, not with how his long, delicate fingers were so easily crushing her windpipe. 

“You were a prisoner to mortality in your childhood,” he leaned forward to whisper in her ear, “and they you were a prisoner of Faerie in your adolescence.”

Her vision blackened around the edges as her mind reached weakly for a memory of when Cardan held her sweetly. She couldn’t quite grasp one. 

“You willingly enslaved yourself to my brother and then you went and made yourself into my prisoner when you engineered my rule,” he laughed, pulling away just enough for her to see his cold eyes once more. “Surely you knew that’s all you were? Bound to my word in public and stuck cleaning up all my messes. God, you make a good little servant.”

She tried to kick at him, but her whole body felt week and she wasn’t able to bring her leg up. Panicked, she looked down to where her hands clawed at his and she found that her nails were broken and bloodied, the beds caked with sea salt. 

“You were a prisoner beneath the waves.”

Seaweed rose from the floor and wrapped around her ankles, pulling down like it was trying to pull her under the water once more. 

“You were a prisoner, bound to the bidding of Balekin.”

She felt the ghost of his lips against hers and she gagged, gasping for air and unable to get any. 

“A prisoner to your own desires,” he smirked. “That’s why you stupidly chose my hand over my control.”

She couldn’t get a word in edgewise, couldn’t correct him, couldn’t even really remember why she’d done it. Was he right?

“And now you’re once again locked in the world of the mortals, a prisoner in your little bedroom cell,” he sneered at her. “It’s where you belong, don’t you agree? I’m sure all of Faerie does.”

Memories of exile came flooding back to her. She could see, almost as if she were a fly on the wall, a disturbingly sick Jude. Clothes were falling off her and her normally tanned skin was deathly pale, the only real structure in her life coming from the rat’s nest that has cemented itself in her hair. 

“Let me tell you a secret, Jude,” he leans back in, lips ghosting against her ear. “That’s where you’ll stay. In that tiny room in that hellish world, wasting away to nothing and waiting for your inevitable death. You’ll go quietly, without a fight and with no one to remember you. Do you know why, Jude?”

Her mouth formed around his name.

Cardan

But she couldn’t say it. 

“I’ll tell you why,” he continued, smirk evident in his icy voice. “It’s because, above all else, you are a prisoner to your own fear. You will always be your own jail cell.”

Tears gushed down her face and she wanted to beg him to stop saying such hurtful things. But she couldn’t, because when Cardan next pulled away, it wasn’t Cardan at all. 

One cold, rotted hand gripped her by the throat as she stared in horror at the decaying body of Balekin Greenbriar, fresh blood still oozing from the fatal wound she’d inflicted. 

She woke screaming. 

Jude Duarte, exiles High Queen of Elfhame, woke screaming. 

She didn’t know the day or the time, where she was or why she was there, all she knew is that she could still feel the cold hand of death wrapped around her throat. 

Cardan wasn’t there, he’d never been there. They’d never built forts or had pillow fights and they likely never would. 

She was blind to the world as she heaved herself out of bed, flying towards the shower to try and wash the stench of death off her skin. She didn’t notice that Vivienne was awake, Oak sitting next to her at the kitchen bar. 

The siblings shared a horrified look and Vivi didn’t give herself the time to hesitate. She picked up her phone, dialed, and prayed. 

It rang three times. 

“Listen, Vivi, I really don’t have the time for th—“

“It’s not about us, Heather,” Vivi rushed to say, taking the sudden silence on the other end as a sign to continue. “It’s Jude. Please, I need your help with Jude.”

More silence, and then:

“I’ll be right over.”


	9. Sticky ficky goes kiting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heather helps Jude out of her funk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No beta we die like men

Silence greeted Jude as she stepped, shaking and weak, out of the shower. She could still see bits and pieces of her dream in her mind’s eye, could still feel the sharpness of Cardan’s nails digging into her neck and smell Balekin’s rotting flesh. 

She tried to take deep breaths, to swallow around the painful lump in her throat, but she couldn’t find the strength to. 

Just as she was about to start hyperventilating again, she heard a knock at the door. It started soft, just three delicate raps. But when nobody answered, the knocking became louder. 

Funny, Vivienne and Oak should still be home. Why weren’t they opening the door?

Jude kept her plush blue towel wrapped tightly around her and walked through the apartment, her wet feet threatening to slip on the linoleum floors. 

“Fucking calm down, I’m here,” she griped as the person on the other side continued to beat at the door. Still, nothing couldn’t prepared her for what she saw on the other side. 

There, out in the hallway, was Heather. 

She opened the door, crossing her arms over her chest. “Vivienne isn’t here.”

Heather brightened upon seeing her, only dulling slightly at the mention of her ex before smiling once more and pushing into the apartment. 

“I’m not here for Vivi,” she stated. “I’m here for you.”

Jude, who couldn’t stop the puzzlement from showing on her face, merely watched as Heather continued through the apartment she’d once shared. She was carrying a long sleeve of fabric, longer even than her leg, tucked up under her arm. 

Heather stopped in front of Jude’s door and motioned for her to enter. Jude raised a brow in response. 

“Get dressed,” she ordered. “We’re going out.”

She said it with enough confidence that Jude didn’t even question it. She moved robotically, going to her room and dressing in comfortable leggings and an old concert hoodie. As she laced up her boots, she studied her sister’s ex lover. 

“Why are you here?” Jude finally asked. 

“I told you, I’m here for you,” she answered, then her face faltered a bit. “I need someone to talk to about,” she sighed, “everything. It’s messing with my head and I can’t figure it all out”

Reasonable enough, Faerie can unhinge even the most sane of people. 

Jude, dressed and ready, nodded for Heather to lead the way. It didn’t even occur to her as she walked out the door that it was the first time in weeks she’d left her self-determined prison. After the dream, she was tired, too bone tired to think about her own sorrow. 

She was tired enough to try something new. 

Neither woman spoke as they hopped on the bus. Being late morning, most people in the city were already at work. It was just them and the bus driver, sitting in a comfortable silence that was broken only by the humming of passing cars. 

As they got off the bus and the smell of salt hit Jude, she finally asked what they were doing. 

“I always used to go kite flying when I needed to think,” Heather explained. “ I’d go with my dad when I was younger and Vivi when we were together. It helped me talk things out.”

Jude blinked against the sunlight, her body still used to the Faerie timeline. 

“I can’t exactly talk this out with dear old dad,” she reasoned. Jude snorted. 

It was the first sound that resembled a laugh she’d made in weeks. 

When she was a little girl and her parents still lived, they always used to go to the beach during the summer. She can remember days spent building castles out of sand and doing cartwheels down the coastline, searching the water with her twin for any sign of mermaids. 

The mermaids she’d imagined were far sweeter than the ones who really lived. 

“C’mon, kick your shoes off!”

So Jude did. She tucked her socks into her boots and tied the laces so she could hang them round her shoulders while they walked. Together, Jude and Heather stepped off the boardwalk and into the sand, the warmth of the sun-baked earth seeping into the bottoms of their feet. 

They walked in silence and Jude thanked whatever gods existed for the fact that the surf was calm that day. They could barely hear the ocean and hardly anyone was in the water. 

“Here looks like a good spot,” Heather decided aloud, dropping her shoes and the sleeve she carried. 

“What’s that?”

“My dual-line,” she answered, pulling fabric and strings and handles and sticks out of the sleeve. “I figured I’d bring the easy one, in case you wanted to try.”

“I’ve never seen a kite that looked like that,” Jude observed the mess of black and purple and green nylon as Heather began to unravel the strings from around the handle. 

Heather grinned at her, laying out some forty feet of line. “It was handmade by a guy down in Georgia. My dad bought it from the artist. It was my first stunt kite, I never liked mono-lines.”

Jude watched quietly as the other girl set up the vaguely triangular kite, testing the tension on the carbon fiber rods that held the fabric open before using a lark’s head knot to tie either of the handle’s strings to separate sides of the kite. 

“Watch this,” Heather grinned, setting the kite down so it was being pushed back by the wind. 

So Jude crosses her arms and watched Heather walk her way back to the handles, keeping the kite’s lines taught so it didn’t go over into the sand. Then, when she’d gotten the handles firmly grasped, she took a step back. 

And the kite launched into the sky. 

For all the beauty Jude had witnessed in Faerie, nothing was quite like this. It flew, nothing like a bird and everything like a leaf gliding through the wind. Though the colors were glaringly unnatural, it still gave off a calming sense of beauty. 

Jude had become so used to the terrifying version of pretty that she’d forgotten what mundane beauty could look like. She’d forgotten how much she’d loved it. 

Heather whooped as she caught the wind, pulling the line in her right hand towards her so the kite did a spin in the air and laughing at how it oversteered. They squinted together, watching the kite fall and then rise as it lost and caught gusts of air. 

Jude smiled. It was small, and it was gone quickly, but she’d smiled all the same. 

“Would you like to try?” Heather asked and she nodded, letting her friend hand her the handles and then stand behind her to help her get the hang of things. 

“If you want it to turn left, pull the left handle towards you. For right, pull the right. Don’t move the handles side to side. Lift them up for the kite to go higher and pull them down for it to go lower,” she explained, laughing loudly as Jude promptly did exactly the wrong thing and sent the kite smashing into the ground. 

“Oh shit—“

“Don’t worry!” Heather exclaimed, running over to the downed kite. “They’re tough!”

She picked up the kite and set the tip back towards the sky, holding it aloft and telling Jude to step back. When she did, Heather launched the kite once more. 

What must’ve been an hour passed as she taught Jude the ins and outs of stunt flying. She got talking about her foils and her quad-lines and how her mother knew how to spin a mono-line and keep it in the air. She told Jude stories of competitions she’d watched and festivals she’d been to. She even mentioned how she’d started a kite flying club in her highschool. 

“It’s just something about the way the wind whispers through the trees on a good day,” she grinned. “Sets my soul at ease. Nothing quite clears the mind like a kite in the sky.”

“We don’t have kites in Faerie,” Jude whispered, almost reverent in her tone. “I suppose it loses its appeal when so many people can fly themselves.”

She passed the handles back to Heather, who began doing tricks like a seasoned professional. 

“Faerie loses its appeal when the people have no appreciation for simple things,” Heather whispered back, sounding perturbed. “Like trust, for that matter.”

Jude snorted as Heather made the kite fly in a square. “Trust? In Faerieland? Vivi didn’t prepare you at all.”

Heather shot her a look and the two stared at each other for a long time until the kite crashed down again. 

She walked to grab the kite and launch it for Heather. 

“How’d you survive? Back when you were a child, I mean.”

Jude crosses her arms, moving back to her previous spot, keeping her eyes on the kite the whole time. 

“Madoc viewed us as his responsibility after he killed Mom and Dad,” she shrugged. “And we were children. The fae are usually very careful with children, even human ones. Babies are so unbelievably rare that to harm a child would be unthinkable for most.”

She allowed herself to look back over and catch Heather watching her. 

“I suppose we just got lucky that we had enough time to learn the ways of Elfhame.”

Heather turned back to the kite. 

“And we used a lot of Rowan berries and salt.”

The other girl pursed her lips and sent the kite careening towards the sand, saving it at the last possible moment. “I just don’t understand how an entire people can be so unbearably cruel. So evil and manipulative, especially when they can’t lie.”

“They’re self-satisfying,” she offered like it wasn’t a bad thing. “A way of life that you either get used to or get crushed by.”

“Don’t they ever get tired of being selfish?”

“Why would they?” Jude half laughed. “It gets them what they want.”

She let the kite fall and neither woman went to retrieve it. 

“Do you ever get tired of playing their game?” Heather asked. 

Jude blinked, her fingers tapping a soundless rhythm on the elbow of her crossed arm as she stared out into the calm, glassy sea. 

“I get tired of losing it,” she finally answered. “And I tire of the fact that I only lose when my selfishness isn’t driven by destruction.”

Together they sat down and Heather, sensing Jude wasn’t done, waited for the younger woman to continue. 

“I’ve killed more people than I care to count, bathed in blood and dug secret graves in the dead of night. I’ve engineered the fall of the eldest Greenbriar child and, unknowingly, helped set the stage for the fall of the others.”

“I’ve dominated meetings and outsmarted countless people I shouldn’t have been able to outsmart.” She finally turned to look at Heather. “I’ve done all this and more. So why is it that it only works when I’m hurting someone? Why is it that, on the briefest occasion I do something out of love—be it crowning Cardan to protect my brother or taking a lover for myself for once or giving myself to a man in marriage because I genuinely thought he cared—why is it that love breeds failure for me?”

Heather blinked calmly, weighing the question in her mind, rolling her thoughts around on her tongue and playing with the handles of her kite as it fluttered oh-so-slightly on the sand. 

“I don’t think love breeds failure for you,” she finally started, “merely success that you aren’t comfortable with.”

Jude raised a brow at her before leaning back in the sand, throwing her arms across her face to block her eyes from the sun. 

“Jude, I’m serious!” Heather insisted. “I get that ruling through Cardan didn’t go as smoothly as you liked, but Oak got to be safe here. He gets to be a normal kid for awhile, learn some basic kindness.”

She went to respond, but Heather cut her off. 

“And yeah that Locke guy was a complete and total tool, but plenty of men are. It wasn’t your insistence on loving him that made him a two-timing whore and your sister a back-stabbing bitch.”

Jude couldn’t help but smirk at that. 

“And, while I’ll admit I don’t really know what’s going on with you and Cardan right now, the fact remains that you’re still married. He could’ve tried to divorce you instead of sending you away. That has to count for something, right?”

“He banished me for murdering his brother,” she felt her face sour at the very idea of Balekin. “Never mind that he challenged me to a duel and, per the rules of courtesy and the fae’s slavish insistence on obeying it, I couldn’t turn him down.”

Heather opened her mouth. 

“And never mind that he forced me to kiss him in the Undersea—“

“WOAH!” Heather exclaimed and Jude went quiet. “He did what?”

She uncovered her face and opened an eye, squinting up at her friend and raising her brows at the shocked expression that she wore. 

“When I was trapped in the Undersea he made me come to him,” she explained, covering her face once more. “I guess he had an idea that I might feel something for his brother so he forced me to kiss him the same way I’d kiss Cardan. He thought me glamoured, I had no choice.”

“Jude that’s assault.”

“Add it to the thousand other things that’ve been done to me. You get used to it after awhile.”

She felt Heather’s hand on her shoulder and started, uncovering her face in shock and finding the older girl staring at her in horror. 

“Jude that’s not right. Just because it happens a lot doesn’t mean it’s okay.”

She chewed the inside of her lip as Heather’s face scrunched up in determination. “You should use some of your murdery badassery next time someone tries that shit on you. I’ll help, I’ve got a taser that looks like lipstick.”

Jude wanted to laugh, but the completely serious look that Heather wore stopped her. 

How long it had been since someone was willing to go to war for her and her alone. Well, if you ignore what Cardan did to get her freed from the Undersea. But was that really the same? He’d not lifted a finger, and he’d had the power of half an army and magic that could boil the sea. 

Heather has nothing, likely not even basic fight training, and she was still ready to back Jude up. 

“How are you handling things since,” Jude changed the subject, “y’know, with Vivi?”

Heather’s face soured and she huffed, staring out at the sea. 

“I’m so angry,” she admitted. “I could get over her not preparing me, I could get over the whole cat thing. But taking my memories? Deciding that I’m not adult enough or strong enough to remember what’s been done to me? I don’t know if that’s forgivable.”

The way her voice broke at the end told Jude everything she needed to know and she wrapped her arm around Heather. 

“But you want to forgive her.”

“You know I do,” she sounded so forlorn. “I love her so much Jude, but I don’t know how we cone back from something this devastating.”

“If you figure it out, I wanna be the first to know,” Jude snorted and Heather cracked a smile once again. “What a pair we make.”

“I’ve never been friends with a murderer before. Or a queen, for that matter,” Heather observed. “Do you get used to it?”

“The murder part? Absolutely.”

Heather shot her a rueful grin. “I have much less of a problem with you getting used to that then the assault thing.”

“What a coincidence,” Jude laughed. “Me too.”


End file.
